Good

There are routines that consume 

your life for a little while

you meet those you could never dream of

knowing

and get closer.

But it only lasts for so long

and then is gone.

And life goes back to what it once was before

without the long nights

without the melodrama

without the thoughts of changing

to stay this way forever

without the people who became so much,

life goes back to what it once was before.

Dream II

My house was white all around, event he beds and the floor and the doors. It seemed like it was made of chalk. It was almost a game I had to play; don't be alone. Never be alone, or you'll disappear. I was with a group, some ten or so kids. There were other groups too, we could hear them through the walls, but we couldn't be alone. We couldn't go out to search. My house was also bigger; more rooms, more opportunities for your group to turn a corner and for you to be alone, just for a second. But a second was enough. It was a maze. I had to go to my room, so two others went with me. I was looking under my white, block bed. They ran out because something had gone wrong. I panicked and shouted at them to wait for me, but it was too late. 

I was alone.

I ran out the door, but the group was gone. Everyone, all the shouting through the walls was gone. It was silent. Then someone walked by. It was someone who too had disappeared. And then I saw ----- (it's someone we all know, but I don't want to say who on here). He was the 'evil' behind all of this, and I knew I wouldn't be able to escape this alternate dimension I was stuck in now.

Then I woke up and forgot it until I got in the shower.

(PS Mitch - It's not who you might think it is, but it's someone oddly close. I think I'm just overstressed about theatre in general.)

Bored

Staring into a flickering candle

In and out of consciousness

I didn't notice that it went out

Or that Colonel Custer died

With his Seventh Cavalry

Too many times have I fallen asleep

And dreamt from the prompt of a first sentence

Tying words together; lost cause to cost lost to...

Jackson, Polk and Testa sipping tea

Fingers curled, talking of platypus.

Oh, did the candle go out?

I must get up, go around, do something!

My house is old, and I've lived there all my life.

I've done everything there is to do

Except climb through the ventilation

Oh wait, nevermind.

Something I haven't done, at least for a while

And I took off the turquoise bike.

(I'm liking the shadow under my hammies)

So off I go, riding with that sense

of pride, being able to do tricks:

Ride English style, one leg resting

Faster than the rush hour cars

Stand on the pedals

Forget the bike and the bumps of the old road

And pretend to fly! 

The closest I might ever get.

But going on a road always has a danger;

There lay a body in the road.

The wing flapped once then stopped, stuck ridged in the air

Like a very bad dream and a sickening stomach.

I stopped the bike, throwing my leg over while it still rolled

A smooth landing, unlike the bird.

I kicked out the pedal stand

Slow only because I thought it dead

Thoughts blooming in my head

(There are these indiscreet things that / will always bring you back to a child / ish way of thinking, of finding / those simplicit reactions, like chemicals / this was one of those)

As I came closer, appearing deformed in his black eye

I took off my flannel on that unusually temperate day

Wrapped him up and balanced his limp neck in hands

He blinked! He blinked! Oh thank you G- oh but wait

He's going to die.

Oh, but it's only cacti

I took it out on the side of the road

And he didn't even stir, only blinked

He flew out, free from the desert's claws

Only to crash on the other side of the road on the front of his neck

sitting, as if broken

I crossed and picked him up in my jacket

He looked at me with his infected eye

Old lady voice from an SUV: don't leave your bike in the road, someone will run over it, hun.

He gazed at her with his little black eye.

I gazed at her with my little black eye.

I let the dove fly out of my hands and nodded.

As soon as she drove away, the bird crashed again

his neck the landing pad

but at least he was safe under a dwarf tree.

I took my bike and continued.

I forgot the bird after turning twice into the honeycomb streets.

I flew down a steep hill, raised high above the bike.

I was almost flying, above the trees and through hotels

but never very high.

Oh, did the candle go out?

I read a poem just now

That made me cry with the last couplet.

I love you Mitchell Cravens.

I had a very bad dream last night. I didn't like it at all. I hadn't remembered it when I woke up, because I think I had dreamt early on in sleep, and then dreamt of other things until I woke up. I was in the shower and remembered a scene from yesterday, just a little glimpse of something insignificant but then it reminded me of that dream. It was like something got caught in my stomach. I almost started to cry when I was putting on my make up.

When it doesn't scare me anymore, I'll tell you what it was.

Sonnet

Humid the dew of day's new dawn
And gone and gone the august wind goes
North through niches of mountains' brawn
Comes no more frost from cold windows

A business gone, for none need scarves
Nor cars, but bars still 'ttract said men;
the kerf cut clean as Company carves
While churches sweep in the rest again

Though classic splay of winter-harsh nights
No longer looms for on us to prey
There's still the cry, the croon of blights
Even in a new spring day.

The question now that stands astute:
will spring coax out valued trees to fruit?

you fly so freely
held by the wind with no destination
in mind
spread high over the ground
with the sun on your shoulders
and a song you still don't know quite how to sing.

am I your cage?
did I see
your shadow pass over me
and snatch you up in a flurry of love
like a little boy who might squeeze his pet
too tightly?

or am I something
more to you
than what this inclination tells me
am I just a whisperer
who encourages you to fly
do I let you come to my sill
and practice your song?

I have dreams of flying
over the trees and through hotels
but I never get very high
perhaps the more you sing
and find your euphoric song
I may learn to fly from you and dream
of the sky.

Mantlepiece

"Mantlepiece"

A man is in a painting.
His eyes are swaths of black.
His face begins to crack.
A glass has been spilled.
The wine trickled down south.
Where the candlelight has filled.

Serving as a mantlepiece he has forever spilt his drink.

Want

I want them to see

The board on my mother's wall

That shows us the months

And how much we still owe

In my hand, check marks

For what we owe not 

Anymore.

I want them to hear

the creak my car groans

in cold frost breath

as to school I go

and hear me say

how we cannot pay

to have it fixed.

I want them to taste

the sweat tears and salt

of mine and mine own parents

who work and learn and try

just as i do

to succeed with what they still 

might have together.

I want them to see

the food not in my fridge

and cabinets empty of imagination.

I want them to see

my brother's past

and my possible future

and all that I have worked for.

I have come 

a distance greater than they

and proceeded to succeed

past their current point.

I want them to see me

for more than what

they think I am.

And I want to see

what they too 

have gone through.

Teacher

Oatmeal every morning

Clean up the floor if it's dirty

Laundry is a happy task

Remake the bed if it's misshapen

And leave for school

Forty-five minutes early

Like the pin ball in a machine

there's only so many options

of what to do, where to roll

the highest score recorded

how fast to accelerate 

from the starting point

but faced with mortality

and something that might come to an end

sea salt on my face

seems like a pleasant vacation

from pin ball machines and routines

look up at gulls and feel down into sand

And the beached jellyfish in Mexico

Or the tourist crowds of Hawai'i

Maybe with Mom, building castles with my brother

Or watching your cousin tan like a cookie

to golden brown?

a private place that would be hard 

for others to find and others to seek

where we could go and smell the wind

watch the crashing waves rock back and forth

without any danger of drowning.

Anomaly

By multiplying oneself
One can be so much more
as three squared is nine
and two squared is four.
But an anomaly that in fact
can never be undone
by multiplying one's self
is one squared is one.

Chairs

Chairs.

That sit under a table

unlike the scrounging dog

black comfortable leather

and now that I think of it

matching black

to the speckles in the marble

the microwave vent

the stove top

and the oven

where spilled pizza once was.

A wise choice

for a modern home.

Love

If love is so sacred

so special

so reserved for a single species

which

in itself

is an anomaly,

then why should there be

normal

acceptable and non acceptable

love?

Fire Head

I have a friend

with red headed hair

much darker though

than hair that is fair

I should say hi

and discuss the day

and perhaps, if it comes

how time's slipped away

And how I adore her

even only in thought

for she sets me on my feet

with the chaos I've wrought.

Dark Chocolate

Bittersweet brown

with changing tastes in every bite

most don't enjoy it

i don't know if i do

it's so much easier to eat

milk chocolate

white chocolate

double chocolate chocolate chip fudge brownies

until you get sick

and then eat dark chocolate

to counteract the sweet

with bitter health

and things you need to eat.

It all comes from

the same place

the same rough hands

of dark workers in the Americas

who see nothing but chocolate

but not the brown

they chop open the fruit

find the cacao

toss the flesh

and repeat until sunset

they don't see the sweet milk and sugar.

And there are those

who eat too much

who fill up on chocolate

but really just sugar

sweetness, kindness, fake sugar

and nothing else

and then they grow fat

or if they're lucky,

just on the inside.

The men who make the chocolate

and the women too

transform cacao

from the fields

from the trees

into goodness

in a varying spectrum

of percents and perception.

Perhaps they tried

to convince us all

that dark chocolate was good

but they found it easier to 

just

add

sugar.

Science has proven

with multiple tests

that dark chocolate helps

your beating heart

or at least it's a start.

So I'll eat my dark chocolate

it tastes fine anyway

and experience the bitterness

it won't drive me away

it's healthy for the heart

and at least that's a start.

Colleen

Black speckled white like clouds in the night

Surrounding her eyes, a mane of pearls

Resembling a woman with once beautiful curls

Winking at me as she smiles, content

Sitting home everyday while we're all away

Idle for hours and minutes between

Sometimes I fear for what I have seen

For gone forever her lost hours went

She comes to my side for she will abide

But I always hope for hills unseen

Where rabbits abound and the land is green

Instead of a dream, that real, sweet scent

She's good to us, and so it is thus

That I want to give her her instinctual needs

Instead of just empathy and internal pleads

Her last years to be bountifully spent

I love my doggy, and my doggy loves me

And that is how I want it to be.

Mortality

The only way

To beat the beast

Is to beat it back

Until you can

no longer.